For those of you you have been living under a rock, Venice is a city made up of canals instead of roads. There are almost no cars, and you can't drive cars through the streets anyway. The streets are tiny and wind all over the place and it's impossible to follow a map. You can't even ride a bike because there are bridges all over the place, and stairs to get to and over the bridges. People travel along the canals on water buses (ferries), or in their personal motorboat. Or, if you're a rich tourist, in gondolas. Venice is effectively a collection if islands, as the canal “streets” are all over the place, leaving neighborhoods connected only by boats and sometimes by bridges. Kim and I had to take the water bus number 2 or 41 to our hostel, so as soon as we got off the train we got in line to buy water bus tickets.
Once we got to the front of the line, we were told that the water buses were on strike, and weren't running right then. This was troublesome, because it was the only way for us to get to our hostel, unless we wanted to pay an absurd amount of money for a gondola or a water taxi...
Luckily for us the strike was scheduled to end in an hour, so we found a restaurant to kill time at. We had spaghetti with the most DELICIOUS meat sauce. Probably some of the best spaghetti I've had in Italy....nom nom nom. By the time our lazy lunch was over, the ferries were running and we got on one to Giudecca, where our hostel was. Turns out our hostel's ferry stop is just a couple stops before San Marcos Piazza, which is basically where all the action is, so that was ideal.
We dropped off our stuff, and headed out to mask-hunt! Since Kim collects masks, Venice is basically her heaven so this Venice trip was more or less for her. She had researched some mask-makers she wanted to check out, so we spent the afternoon checking out their workshops so Kim could spend her life savings on masks (She only bought 2! I'm so proud.) After that we got some gelato (ginger and passionfruit? OKAY) like we do basically every day, and after wandered around the Piazza....where we saw a SEAGULL EATING A PIGEON. WHAT?!?! Since when do seagulls eat pigeons?! It was terrifying, so we headed back to the hostel to shower and see what we wanted to do about food (pigeons were not an option).
Post-shower, when we felt like humans again, we decided we actually wanted to have a life and go out at night! We actually hadn't done that yet, as we are EXHUASTED every night and usually buy cheap food and pass out. We were exhausted, but we were also in Venice for only about 24 hours, so we had to make the most of it. We got pretty and headed back to San Marcos, where orchestras serenade diners on the piazza while couples “dance” aka sway back and forth. Since we were too cheap to eat at a restaurant with an orchestra, we headed down a side street and found a more budget-friendly restaurant. For once we didn't order pizza or the cheapest pasta possible, we both ordered....drumroll please....steak! It was a delicious change from carby food or ham and cheese. We even ordered wine that cost more than 5 euro, although not by choice, as the house wine was 14 euro/bottle . . . but it was delicious so its okay!
After that I wanted to find a club (surprised!) but the closest we found was a bar with a mostly-empty dance floor having reggae night, which we weren't too thrilled about. We tried to order whiskey sours, but the bartender obviously had no idea what we were trying to order....we told her it was whiskey and sour mix, but she didn't know what sour mix was. She asked if we wanted whiskey and lemon juice, so we agreed and it was pretty good! After 1 drink we left, and headed back to the ferries home.
Hostel review:
We stayed at the HI hostel, which was just called Venezia. The location of this hostel was fantastic. It was on the island facing San Marcos square, and it was right on the water, so we could see it from the ferry before we even got off. The ferry ride from the hostel to San Marcos was like 5 minutes, which is ideal, and the ferries ran every 20 minutes 24 hours a day. The hostel was HUGE. There were 10 beds in our room, 6 rooms on our floor, and 3 floors. My math tells me that's 180 beds....for women. And 180 for men, I assume. The staff was helpful and friendly, although slow, and breakfast was free & edible. The common area was big, and had the World Cup playing (of course) so there were people in it. They had computers with internet for a fee, and they advertised wifi but when we asked about it they said it was broken, so I'm not sure if they had it or not. The whole place was very clean, including the bathrooms, which had hot water AND water pressure. Our room had dividers between it, so there was: a window, 2 bunk beds, a divider, 2 bunk beds, a divider, 1 bunk bed + lockers, so they did a pretty good job of trying to give us privacy in a hostel with hundreds of beds – other hostels just line up the bunk beds in a room and forget about privacy.
Next up: Croatia!
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